Young dog suddenly drinking copious amounts of water and excessive weeing, very worried!

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Dear Mumsnetters, having found excellent doggie advice on here I thought I would ask this.
2 year, 8 month old tiny Jack Russell suddenly drinking massive amounts of water, this from a dog that doesn't usually drink much in even last years extreme heat. Also he has had two accidents in the house which he has never done since a puppy.
I have recently changed his food to Eden Holistic pet food (dry) before he was on Lilly's kitchen plus a little chicken, he still has the chicken with the Eden. The house is warmer because we have the heating on all the time now but only to 20c, he does drape himself around any heat source plus recently the humidity has dropped in the house due to other factors often below 50 RH.
He has allergies for which he receives a monthly injection.
Tomorrow he anyway has an appointment at vet for the injection and I will mention this. He is an absolute darling, loves everyone, amazing with other dogs, children and strangers, I absolutely adore him and am home full time with him, please have any of you experienced similar? I am worried sick!

I didn't think of that re his blood sugar, I'm so worried though that the protein in his food might hurt him, I literally cannot sleep with worry.

Hi Karwomannghia, I'm sorry to hear about your little dog, please what were the symptoms apart from drinking? I think my last dog had this are the end but he was very old, 18 years intact..

Thankyou all so much so far for your input and concern, it's very kind of you all. His name is Wilson by the way, he is very well known in our neighbourhood as he is so friendly and loves everyone he meets, he just always introduces himself to people and they fall for his little charms bless, that and his tiny stature.

He is lovely, and I hope you get a diagnosis soon. It is so worrying when they cannot explain how they feel.

Hi OP he is gorgeous and it sounds like the vet is doing all the tests to get to the bottom of the cause.

If it’s not his kidneys, or medication excessive thirst and urinating in a young dog can be caused by diabetes insipidus (much rarer and also trickier to diagnose than diabetes mellitus).

Hope your lovely chap gets some
answers soon.

Thankyou so very much, I'm on the case, I gave him rice and lean chicken for breakfast this morning and will be chasing the vet for answers, I'm determined to do everything for him.

This is the thing, I think a quick accurate diagnosis is essential, I know everyone loves their dog here but he is incredibly precious to me, maybe unhealthily so, the last year or so have been very stressful and he makes me laugh, he provides that unconditional loyalty and affection and really just going for walks every day with him lifts my spirits.

This is him this morning, he seems very tired, he has always felt the cold, in winter he is usually hugging a radiator bless.

Hi she was quite old by then (boxer) but excessive thirst to the point of running off in the park to find a river and drinking till she was sick then drinking more and weeing everywhere.
google says it’s quite common in jrt

Our Labrador was the same and turned out to have diabetes so we needed to inject her twice a day. She was fine once having treatment.

Oh I'm so sorry. This was how my little was behaving, asking to go outside, he rings a bell to do this and drinking rain water. Also my previous jrt behaved like this at the end.

An update: from yesterday morning I stopped feeding him any of the new dry kibble, I switched to just chicken and rice, By the afternoon he was drinking much less and then obviously weeing less. I also called the vet and arranged to drop in a urine sample.
At 5pm the vet called saying all his blood work and urine analysis was perfect.
I explained his water works were quite a bit better.
This vet, a different one at the same practice, believes it was the new kibble despite the first vet insisting it wouldn't have that dramatic effect.
Anyway I now have to measure his water consumption over 5 days and report back. I'm sort of wondering now if the protein element was too high for him? Or the food just wrong for him in particular.
Thankyou all so much for all your help and advice, the fluid monitoring, urine sampling and personal experiences. I think I will need to be very careful what I feed him going forward, hopefully he will return to sort of normal functioning, he is better again this morning and this episode will just be one expensive and scary mistake on my part. X

Oh my, look at him! Sending love and get well wishes to your darling boy!

Good news. I do know of dogs that will just drink and drink as it’s there, with no health issues, maybe your boy is just one of these. I feed wet food with dry kibble as a top up and I have to tell my dog to drink as he doesn’t drink enough.

Hi Mindy, this is the thing, he usually avoids drinking, he is still not quite right, sort of clingy. I have emailed the food company regarding my experience as I would be interested in their feedback.
I'm not quite convinced it has been solely the food so I'm keeping a close eye on him.

Oh bless him, that's good news!

My old boy had a moment like that when he was drinking way more, he was old so we were expecting anything, we did a lot of blood and urine works but everything came back negative.
After a few weeks of head scratching, the vet asked me to monitor his water intake, and after 1 week, we realised that his water intake was actually back to normal.
That was an expensive scare for sure!

Exactly it has been a very expensive exercise here too, but you just can't take the risk can you.

Glad he seems to be getting better. Did the vet test him for diabetes? Maybe the food was high in salt and made him thirsty.

Oh OP he's such a cutie! I have recently gone through similar with the fluffy love of my life: massive increase in water intake and huge wees about 6 weeks ago while we were actually on hols. When we got home the vet did tests for kidney issues, diabetes, bladder infection, general infection, cushings and meanwhile we monitored his water intake daily. So far the vet has found absolutely nothing, and he's returned to completely normal drinking and weeing! She thinks it's possible he ate something toxic on hols (my little guy will scavenge anything) and had flushed it out before the blood tests, or it's the early stages of something like cushings, but too early to show up in the tests. We will keep monitoring his water intake and the vet has recommended repeating some of the tests in 3 months time. Super expensive to find nothing, but you don't want to mess around with those symptoms....

Yes exactly, I didn't either want to mess around given the symptoms, thankyou for your post, I think I will ask for the test to be repeated in 3 months as I feel my previous jrt may have had this but diagnosed too late, he was very old though. It's also reassuring that your little fluffy recovered well given the same symptoms.

Hi Bananabug, he had blood and urine analysis, so I'm pretty sure they did, the thing is he usually hates drinking from his water dish and prefers puddles! Or licking the moisture from grass..

Some dry food can cause bladder crystals or stones in terrier breeds.

I once rescued a Bedlington. First night she drank buckets and peed 52 times in 7 hours. 8am the following morning we were at the vet - bladder stones. She had surgery to remove them and overnight the drinking stopped, then the peeing went back to normal.

Some foods can cause crystals to form in the bladder, which irritates it, so they drink more and pee more to get rid of the irritant. Continued feeding of the food causes the crystals to become stones.

My vet told me that terriers in particular can struggle to process certain minerals, and more so in dried food. I put her on raw after that - no more problems.

As it started after a change of food and changed after you switched from it, it would suggest that food had a mineral your little chap couldn't process, and crystals were irritating his bladder.

More info here:

https://wagwalking.com/condition/crystalluria

Thankyou for this, very useful information, maybe he is just better with Lilly's kitchen, I just thought this new food might be better for him..
He also has cooked plain chicken with the Lilly's kitchen or he just wouldn't eat it, I have a freezer full of Bella & Duke raw food too, really I have been trying to sort his allergies without him having an injection every month, this was behind my idea of looking for a more 'pure' food. I'm scared to try the raw now, crumbs.